Friday, October 27, 2017

WeekendArtChallenge 102717—CarmenSinek

Click through to see the illustration and design requirements for your single card submission, due Monday morning. Every submission warrants feedback, which you may use to revise your submission any number of times. I will aim to review the most recent submission from each designer.

Garruk's Pursuit 3BBSorcery (R)Exile target creature or Planeswalker. Search its controller's graveyard, hand, and library for all cards with the same name or Planeswalker type as that card and exile them. Then that player shuffles his or her library.

Dev can balance it. 1B still seems dangerous. 2B is a lot, and we maybe don't want it to start at 2/2 because of skulk. Realistically, skulk is never coming back, so I guess it's moot. But in the world where skulk exists, this is doing something neat.

Welcome the Pure2BBSorceryPut target green or white creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. That creature is a black zombie instead of its other colors and types."Good morrow, Auragar the Just. Isn't it grand to be unburdened of your morality?"

Interesting! From the flavor and the enemy-color mechanic I was expecting this to hit opponents' graveyards only. Turns out that's a real card (Ashen Powder) that costs 2BB. If your intent was for this to be a "hate card" that only hits opponents, I'd love to see it pushed to 1BB.

On the other hand, as it's written I'd just build a normal-ish reanimator deck around this, trying to get some white and/or green creatures in my graveyard. Iona and Elesh Norn are popular reanimation targets anyway, right?

Making it target other GYs only does sound more fun and thematic, but it also forces it to be an actual hate card, useless when your opponent isn't playing those colors. Maybe Ashen Powder with a bonus against g/w creatures?

Hand of Decay 1BBCreature HorrorWhen ~ etbs put a -1/-1 counter on target creature.T:for target creature you dont control for each counter on that creature you may put another counter of that type on that creature3/1

Hand of Decay can slowly kill any creature it can target. It can alternately help grow one of your own creatures. Or charge up a Lightning Reaver or Surrakar Spellblade. It's always nice to have other, less parasitic uses for a card, but the flavor mismatch there bothers me more than the utility we gain, especially when our starting flavor is so good. And the gameplay of finding other -1/-1 counters to put on creatures to keep Hand of Decay going.

If we do keep this open-ended, we definitely limit it to sorcery speed.

The combination of must-attack and self-growth is significant, if not fun. Your opponent knows you can make it 5/5 or so on turn 4, so they probably don't block, and you probably use the mana to develop your board further. Or maybe they block to force you to spend your mana and prevent stall your board. Maybe they kill it in response to the pump. Sometimes you'll pump it unblocked because you've got nothing better to do, or you're just that aggro. Maybe it needs to be a 2B 1/1 or a 3B 2/2 (but squaring the stats ain't a bad idea); Dev can worry about that.

Black Oath Mantle 1BBEnchantment — Mantle (r)Enchanted creature is a 4/3 black creature with lifelink and “At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose 4 life.”Mantle (Tap an unenchanted untapped creature you control: If it’s a main phase, attach ~ to that creature.)Black as his purpose did the knight resemble.

Is this "Enchant creature" or "Enchant creature you control?" Mantle makes me think the latter, but this might be cooler without mantle. Mantle is neat, though I'm not sure we want to blue the line further between enchantments and artifacts. Having to tap the recipient during a main phase means it can't attack or block for a full turn longer than normal, which is extra rough when the life loss comes first.

Also, it's rough that no amount of attacking or targeting huge creatures will allow you to get ahead on life. You're always struggling to keep up (unless your creature has double strike or other +s). That's a cool place for a black rare to put you, but I want more for that risk than making a string of 1/1s bigger.

It's likely that this should be 6 power so you can gain 6 and lose 4 each turn, letting your opponents get in enough damage between the gaps.

The idea with Mantle is it doesn't have Enchant creature at all, that Mantle covers "enchant creature you control". Equipment are fun and a great space, but this is an effort towards playing in that space without just making colored artifacts (which this could easily be, if you /want/ colored artifacts). It's designed to work on just your creatures, but on any main phase, not just your own.

Devouring Shadow-Cloak 1BBArtifact — Equipment (R)Equipped creature gets +6/+6 and is a black Shade in addition to its colours and types and has “Whenever this creature attacks or blocks, put two -1/-1 counters on it.”Whenever Devouring Shadow-Cloak becomes unattached from a permanent, sacrifice that permanent.Equip 3

Making this an Equipment mitigates the card disadvantage of Unstable Mutation / Consuming Fervor in a major way. So does the attack/block trigger (since you could just keep the creature back as a giant blocker). So does the doubling from 3-1 to 6-2.

That being said, this seems like a cool, resonant design. And I don't really know that it would be unbalanced, especially since it requires 6 mana initially.

By the way, I don't think the last ability is doing all that much. Unless the creature was already pretty big, unattaching after one or two attacks/blocks will probably kill it.

Double Unstable Mutation / Consuming Fervor is cool. I agree that putting that on an equipment mitigates the downside an awful lot. I definitely think this should still shrink on upkeep, both to preserve the mindspace of the reference, and to prevent turtling. Sacrificing on unattach is important, because it means you don't get to leave a bunch of 1/1s or whatever behind.

I'd choose a type other than Shade, because I'm expecting to see the Looming Shade ability as a result.

I think power in pain could be named mechanic for a set. It works on defense all by itself. Multiples combo nicely. And it keys right into black's self-harm tendency. Vengeful Shadow could maybe be common.

Right, I think it plays into Magic's mechanics and flavor well. I would just not want to have to make the decision as the opponent of whether to attack and trigger abilities. Perhaps in a slower set where you are encouraged to board stall until you can hit for a bunch.

Hunting Ringwraith 2BBCreature- Specter (Uncommon)3/3Malice (Whenever this creature would be dealt damage, prevent that damage unless an opponent pays 3 life or discards a card.)Whenever CARDNAME deals combat damage to a player, that player discards a card.

I'm going back and forth on the Malice details... I know I want it to be an indestructible-esque "punisher" ability, but I wasn't sure whether the cost should be "torment" or just a straight-up life payment, and in this case I split the difference.

Ringwraith is just a touch weak for uncommon, since I can block it with my 3/1 for two and lose 3 life. If it had evasion, or the self-preservation ability were my call, then it would be more of a threat. It's not ideal that I can pay the same card I would've discarded by letting it hit me to block it and keep it dead.

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We met as competitors and collaborators in the second Great Designer Search. After the contest was over, we decided we still had things to say about designing Magic: the Gathering. So we started a blog.